Getting Back to The Land, and to Each Other
Our world is in crisis. Our current levels of consumption are not sustainable. The results of this overconsumption are the loss of farmland, growing urbanization, the destruction of the environment and a global food crisis. Simultaneously, social isolation is taking hold and we are growing more and more disconnected from each other with dire consequences to our physical, mental and emotional health. We need powerful solutions that we can integrate into our everyday realities that enable us to address these issues together.
This is what we are creating at Abundance Community Farm. We have developed a Community Agriculture model that bridges the gap between the city and the country and enables city dwellers to become farmers. It can be replicated around the world to grow local organic food and create thriving communities that can better withstand the challenges and uncertainties of our global economy. Our model aims to improve quality of life for all by strengthening our connections to each other while reducing our ecological footprint through sharing resources.
We’ve had an amazing journey with implementing this model. It has allowed us to grow our in season produce and develop a deep sense connection to land and food. It has also enabled us to build rooted community and a sanctuary that kids and adults can come alive. This is truly providing us a better life with less, which is exactly what our world needs.
“Visiting Abundance Community Farm is a coming home every time, home to the land and to the community. Just a few days there recharges me and reminds me of what is really important in life.” ~ Bettine Rothe, Community Agriculture Member
We need your support to be able to spread this model and inspire others to take similar initiatives. We express our sincere gratitude for taking the time to consider supporting this campaign.
Much Love and Gratitude, Amir & the Abundance Team
Ad Salesman Becomes Farmer
Common Ground Magazine advertising salesman moves on to farming our common ground with a new model for sustainable agriculture called Community Agriculture!
In June of 2016, after six years of supporting the mission of Common Ground Magazine by selling advertising and learning a lot about so many movements out in the world to reclaim earth as a healthy, productive sanctuary for life and wellbeing for all beings, and upon the invitation of my friend Amir Niroumand, I decided to put into practice the principles advocated by the longtime and much loved monthly publication and become an organic farmer in Agassiz, BC!
Abundance Community Farm sprouted as a social experiment for growing a land-based community culture rooted in growing organic food in gardens and a food-forest! We believe deeply in the necessity for more people currently living in cities to become involved in stewarding land, especially farmland; taking care of the soil, water and air by growing food organically without the use of harmful pesticides and other chemicals, and doing all this as a community, for the mutual benefit of all involved, and without monetizing the food produced for profit. We also do not till the soil, which preserves the soil quality and community of microbes, mycelium and insects that rely on undisturbed soil.
In a sobering article published on March 7 in the Times Colonist, food and farming writer Randy Shore writes “The B.C. government’s consultation on the future of the Agricultural Land Reserve will have more than opinions to weigh this spring, as Kwantlen University’s Institute for Sustainable Food Systems has released a white paper detailing the forces that continue to chip away at the province’s farmland. About 50 per cent of ALR land is lying unused, in part due to B.C. s failure to ensure the economic viability of the food sector, according to the authors of Protection is not Enough. But that doesn’t mean it should be used for something else, according to Richard Bullock, former chairman of the Agricultural Land Commission, which oversees the ALR.
Rather, “serious consideration should be given to eliminating the ability to exclude land from the ALR and to ensure that agricultural vitality of land within the ALR is maintained”
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/abundance-community-farm-farming/x/18169142#/
